Is Xiaomi working on a modular phone design?

Xiaomi may be taking a page out of the Motorola playbook with plans for a new modular smartphone.

Motorola’s Project Ara is is an effort to offer a series of smartphone modules that will let you upgrade or customize phones one piece at a time by adding a new camera, screen, processor, or back cover, for instance.

Xiaomi founder Lei Jun posted images of what looks like a similar project called “Magic Cube” to social networking site Weibo recently, but then removed them.

It’s not clear from the images where the smartphone maker actually plans to let users customize every aspect of the phone — Magic Cube might just be a system for changing the look and feel of the device by adding a bit of custom color to the case.

Xiaomi is one of China’s fastest-growing smartphone makers, and the company has a reputation for offering high quality devices at reasonable prices. They’re hard to get your hands on though — the company tends to sell out of phones quickly every time a new model goes up for order.

via Phone Arena